We caught up with "Public Enemies" at Serene/Sathyam for the friday night show. Michael Mann's previous best ones have been - Heat, The Insider, Manhunter and The last of the Mohicans - and so the obvious expectations were set for another pot-boiler. With Johnny Depp and Christian Bale thrown into the mix, the movie sure should have been an exhilarating ride.
Loosely based on the real life story of John Dillinger ( Johnny Depp ), who with Baby face Nelson and Alvin Karpis wreaked havoc with bank robberies around the great depression era ( 1929 - 1934 ), the movie sets the tone with a prison breakaway by Dillenger and his cohorts. Agent Melvin Pervis ( Christian Bale ) enters the screen blazing down Pretty Boy Floyd ( Channing Tatum in a cameo ) in the woods. The scene shifts to Edgar Hoover commissioning the FBI and appointing Pervis as the lead detective to hunt down Dillinger and the likes. The rest of the movie is the cat and mouse game played out between the agents and the robbers, with the law gaining the upper hand as the movie progresses. One by one, Dillinger's associates are gunned down and he is finally left to protect his love interest which ultimately brings about his downfall. The movie is interspersed with Dillinger's love interest - Billie Frechette ( Marion Cotillard ) and 3 clear sequences of bank robberies and an additional prison getaway.
Highlights :
The period setting, gun fights and stake outs.
Handy cam style chase sequences
Johnny Depp's simmering ruthlessness and occasional wisecracks
Letdowns :
Underutilized Bale
Slow pace of the movie
A rather weak background score
The dubbing could have been better. Dialogues appeared muffled in an effort to recreate the southern US accent of that period.
The movie overall doesnt live upto what we have come to expect from Michael Mann, but still delivers in patches. Worth one time watch. Rating - 6/10
